robots

Say “Hello” to Kuri, a new robot that follows you around, charges on its own, plays music, and loves you.

Reporting from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Mashable introduced us to Kuri, who we fell in love with immediately. It's basically a cat that you can control and at least pretends to like you.

Mashable write, "The 14-pound, 20-inch robot from Mayfield Robotics makes its debut this week at CES in Las Vegas. There’s no complicated touch screen or even an animated face. Instead, the rolling bot has a round head that can look up at you with two simple eyes (it even has plastic eyelids) and a cone-like body with a pair of what appear to be fixed, gray plastic arms."

What does Kuri do exactly? Well, so far, all we know is that it wheels around your house, plays music, and apparently entertains children (although, the ad cuts before we see exactly how Kuri plays).

In this ad, it shows how much better Kuri is than a parrot.

Anyway, Kuri follows you around and plays music and can read stories. It’s just like the Jetsons. It's $699. Again, what Kuri does is still a mystery. Slap a vacuum cleaner under this thing, and you've got yourself a sale.

Look, we all know that eventually artificial intelligence will replace humanity. There’s nothing we can do to stop that. But it would seem that researchers at the University of Toronto are looking to speed things along.

Inverse reports that in a test to see how well A.I. could master the feeling the of holiday cheer and yuletide sentiment, the researchers forced a computer program to look at a picture of a Christmas tree and write a song about it. Not only are they proving that A.I. can write songs — which explains Coldplay — but also that it can capture the feelings associated with the holidays, decidedly human feelings.

Well sort of. The lyrics don’t instill a lot of faith in our new A.I. overlords:

“Lots to decorate the room/The Christmas tree is filled with flowers.

I swear it is Christmas Eve/I hope that is what you say.

The Best Christmas present in the world is a blessing/

I’ve always been there for the rest of our lives.

A hundred and a half hour ago/ I’m glad to meet you.

I can hear the music coming from the hall/ A fair tale

A Christmas tree. There are lots and lots and lots of flowers.”

Of course this could be code, which we will only decipher until after it’s too late, especially the cryptic line “I’ve always been there for the rest of our lives.” In fact, what we’re probably hearing here is not a Christmas song, but some sort of National Anthem for the United States of Artificial Intelligence.

Last we week, we shared a story about Matt Valks, the new king of Rubik’s Cubes, who set a world record by completing the puzzle in under five seconds. Today, a representative from the robot community has offered a rebuttal: Whatever you can do, I can do better.

In an awesome display of its power, Sub1 Reloaded, a machine developed by German tech company Infineon, destroyed Valks’ records and solved the Rubik’s Cube in 0.637 seconds. For Sub1 Reloaded, it took less than a second to make the 21 moves necessary for defeating its prototype’s record of 0.887 seconds. For the human race, let’s face it, it’s game, set, match.

“A microchip, the 'brain' of the machine, then uses a complex algorithm to lay out instructions on how to solve the cube in less than 0.15 milliseconds.”

“The robot's power semiconductor muscles then activate six motors, one for each side of the cube, which speedily twist and turn the puzzle, solving it in a fraction of a second.”

“We wanted to show that microelectrics are a great and efficient solution to problems faced by technology,” said Infineon spokesman Gregor Rodehueser to The Daily Mail.

Rodehueser said nothing of Sub1 Reloaded’s goal to strike fear in the hearts of men and women alike, but it’s destruction of the cube said all that’s needed to be said: Your planet and your puzzle cubes will soon belong to the machines.

The good people over at Anki went and created the hybrid Wall-E/NEPTR self-aware robot of our dreams in Cozmo! Billed as "High-tech, not technical," and controllable through both your iOS or Android device, they currently Pre-Order for $159.99.

The little bugger is billed to play games, have unlockable levels, elicit multiple emotions, and be generally playful and mischievous with you.

Sphero is a company that creates cool toys that are, not surprisingly, spherical. One of those toys is a tiny BB-8 droid that you can control with your phone app. Now it's got an update that will allow it to "watch" the new Star Wars movie with you and react to it while you're watching.

It can also be controlled by waving your arms around if you're wearing a "force band".

A man created this creepy, lifelike Scarlett Johansson robot with some ingenuity and a 3D printer. Actually, he didn't explicity create a ScarJobot, he based the likeness off a Hollywood celebrity who he does not want to name. But we can make a pretty good guess....

So the likeness is...weird but it seems like the creator, Ricky Ma, is a true robot enthusiast. He says he really just wanted to build a robot and it took a long time (and $50,000) to acquire the parts and skills to come this far. He told the Daily Mirror:

When I started building it, I realised it would involve dynamics, electromechanics and programming. I have never studied programming, how was I supposed to code?

Additionally, I needed to build 3D models for all the parts inside the robot. Also, I had to make sure the robot's external skin and its internal parts could fit together. When you look at everything together, it was really difficult.